Ah, I have nothing very smart, witty, or intellectual to say in this post. Its possible what I say will not even anything remotely relevant to our study of Yojimbo, but I just figured out how to embed videos into my blog, and I’m eager to use my new talent (not that its difficult to do, but I’m still excited about it).
I found this nice little clip from the end of the film and thought I’d share it, mostly because I like it. One of the things I think is interesting about it is the way the smoke obscures our “hero” as he walks towards his enemies. I think this is representative of how little we know of him as well as how he is able to obscure his true motives after arriving in the town.
This brings me to a thought I had earlier today about this movies relation to The Glass Key. At first, I wondered what the relation between the book and this film could possibly be. After doing some online research, I discovered that this film might be a much closer adaptation of another of Hammett’s novels, Red Harvest. The plot, which involved a detective who watches a town slowly destroy itself, seems to fit this film much better, but I still think there are some similarities to The Glass Key. The film seems to draw out the secrecy of Ned Beaumont; just as we never know Ned, we never really know the bodyguard. We discussed in class how we could never really know what Ned was thinking or what his motivations were, and we see that much more with the bodyguard than we did with Ed. Yojimbo also highlights Ned’s more negative characteristics, while those were only touched on with Ed during his visit to the Matthews’. Yojimbo also tries to give the viewer a fuller picture of Ned/Ed/the bodyguard by portraying him as a flawed character, but one who tries to redeem himself by doing good. I suppose The Glass Key attempts to do this as well with the Janet storyline, but I think Yojimbo accomplishes this much more effectively.
I wanted to blog about a particular scene, but I couldn’t find a screen-cap for it to help illustrate what I’m talking about (and refresh my memory). But, I’m going to attempt to talk about it anyway. Throughout the film viewing, I was thinking about character height (often merely placing them more forward in the frame) as an indicator of dominance. In the first half of the film Paul is often placed more forward in the frame, indicating his control of the situation and the hold he has over Ned/Ed. As the film continues, Paul is placed farther back in the frame and Ned/Ed is given prominence. This power switch is especially seen when Farr brings in Paul for questioning and Ed goes to visit him. Paul is lying on a cot while Ed stands above him looking down on him. In addition (and this is where a screen cap would be helpful), Paul is in less light and Ed is backlit and in contrast to the sun coming in the window behind him, giving him more prominence in the scene. The bars of the window create a cross-hatch patter over Paul, visually representing the predicament he is caught in.
I’ve been thinking a little about doubles lately, mostly because two other novels I’m currently reading make good use of them. Ned and Paul are the most likely suspects in the Glass Key to be doubles, though there may be some argument for Opal and Janet. Paul is, as much as the reader can see through this narrowly focused novel, one of the characters most deeply involved in the crime world. While the reader sees Ned’s actions in the light of a noble motive – finding Henry’s killer – Paul’s leadership in the crime world, and Ned’s importance to Paul mirrors how deeply Ned is involved in crime. As this novel is also about the mystery of identity, we can use what we know of Paul to re-read what we know of Ned to shed more light on Ned’s character. Likewise, if we are going to read Paul as an extreme expression of Ned’s traits, both positive and negative, more light is shed on Ned’s relations with Janet. Paul states several times that he is violently, passionately in love with Janet. While the read never sees any actions confirming this statement, Ned action’s, coupled with Paul’s statements, would surely seem to denote love, or at the very least, a deep affection. While in this case the two men each display a symptom of love, their respective reactions are typical of their characters. Ned is more taciturn, and Paul speaks his mind without fearing consequences. I wish I could come up with a bit of a better argument of why these two ought to be seen as doubles, rather than simply listing the convenience of reading them as such, but I need a bit more time to think about it.
For those of you who may be wondering, no I did not come up with the wonderfully witty blog name myself. Rather, it comes from the first line of ee cumming’s poem of the same name. It struck me that besides encompasing some of my thoughts about writing in general, the title would be slightly ironic as this is a blog, and therefor not written with a pencil. So, for your viewing pleasure, here is the entire poem (sadly though, I still can’t figure out WordPress formatting to make the poem look the way cummings intended it):
even a pencil has fear to
do the posed body luckily made
a pen is dreadfully afraid
of her of this of the smile’s two
eyes….too, since the world’s but
a piece of eminent fragility.
Well and when—Does susceptibility
imply perspicuity,or?
shut
up.
Seeing
seeing her is not
to something or to nothing as much as
being by her seen, which has got
nothing on something as i think
